In the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Long Term Evolution (LTE) release-8 (Rel-8), release-9 (Rel-9), and release-10 (Rel-10), the Physical Downlink Control CHannel (PDCCH), the Physical Control Format Indicator CHannel (PCFICH), and the Physical Hybrid-ARQ Indicator CHannel (PHICH) are transmitted in the first a few limited Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) symbols of each subframe. As a consequence, that control region has limited capacity. In addition, interference co-ordination in the frequency domain cannot be achieved.
Therefore, there is a need in the art for extending the control region in the Physical Downlink Shared CHannel (PDSCH) region to expand the capacity of the control region.